Introduction to the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing

Cloud computing (CC) has many benefits, so its use has spread rapidly, particularly in the business sector. An important consideration in the acceptance of CC is whether the CC system is dependable, and it can differ among industry and service type. However, little research has considered the effect of dependability (composed of availability, reliability, security, maintainability) on CC acceptance. Especially, group comparisons between high IT-intensive (Hi-ITi) and low IT-intensive (Lo-ITi) industries have not been reported, nor have comparisons between software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS)/infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). This study aims to explore how the dependability of CC affects users’ intent to accept it, with focus on how this intent is affected by intensity of IT use (by industry) and by the type of CC service used. To validate the proposed model, this study applied structural equation modeling and conducted multi-group analysis. A total of 230 business managers in South Korea represent the sample for our study. For the full dataset, the three dependability attributes (availability, reliability, security) do not affect the usefulness of CC, but do affect the ease of use of CC. The usefulness of CC is a determinant for positive intention to accept CC, whereas the ease of use of CC is not. Maintainability is the strongest determinant of CC adoption for the full dataset, and for all individual groups, except those that use SaaS. For Hi-ITi and Lo-ITi industries, results show that managers show no differences in their perceptions of the effect of dependability attributes (availability, reliability, security) on the usefulness and the ease of CC. The absence of such a difference in managers’ perception also applies to the relationship between two core variables of TAM (i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use) and behavioral intention to accept CC. For SaaS and PaaS/IaaS, managers have different perceptions of security on the usefulness of CC, and the effect of the usefulness of CC on the intention to accept CC. The findings can provide academic researchers and industry practitioners with a differentiated and in-depth perspective on the understanding and the spread of CC.

Guest Editorial: Situational awareness of integrated energy systems

Cloud computing and big data: Technologies and applications

I is both an honor and pleasure to report that IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC) has enjoyed yet another successful year in 2009 and, justifi ably, it continues to be recognized as one of the fl agship publications of the IEEE Computer Society. Our motto “Leading worldwide innovation and technical excellence in computers” defi nes our mantra with respect to our glorious past (2010 will be the 59th year of publication) and an ever bright future. In 2009, we have seen the continuation of the growth pattern as experienced over the last few years: The number of submissions is in excess of 650, while maintaining a time-to-fi rst decision at just above three months (93 days to be precise). Overall, the acceptance rate is nearly 30 percent and TC has successfully published numerous Special Sections (SSs) on areas of interest to the readership. Additionally, the 2008 impact factor of TC stands at 2.61, i.e. at its highest level as per IEEE CS records and in the top 10 percent of all ISI-indexed journals in computer-related areas. The publication queue of TC remains healthy, albeit as Editor-In-Chief I have experienced an increase in the number of submissions that are clearly out-of-scope; I invite potential contributors to make themselves familiar with the goals and objectives of TC, thus avoiding a likely disappointment upon notifi cation due to an early administrative rejection. While every effort is being made to match expertise in the Editorial Board with submissions, this may not always be possible and makes an early decision fair to all parties involved. Hence, do not hesitate to visit the IEEE Computer Society Web site and, in particular, the newly redesigned TC web page (http://www.computer.org/tc). A further feature of TC is the rigorous and effi cient process of manuscript review; the unabated objective of this publication remains the dissemination of results of the highest quality and technical impact. Hence, acceptance is very competitive and can be recommended only upon positive recommendations from all reviewers. As such, revisions are pursued only when supported by public and private comments from reviewers and Associate Editors (AEs); hence a revision is recommended only if a manuscript is considered to have the likely potential of a fi nal acceptance. It is my responsibility as EIC to ensure that while maintaining fairness, the review process proceeds on a timely basis by not incurring unnecessary delays due to either clearly poor quality in incoming submissions and/or the requirement of an excessive delay due to a lengthy revision. In some cases the “Revise and Resubmit” decision is used to alert the authors of the defi ciencies of a manuscript early on, while enticing them to further pursue an additional submission of their revised work. In my opinion, acceptance criteria will continue in the future to be more stringent, thus further increases in the paper rejection rate should be expected. The role of an EIC is certainly not an easy one; as the number of submissions to TC increases, my load and commitment have also increased. Throughout my appointment I have replied to authors with celerity to clarify their concerns, while preserving the confi dentiality of the review process; however, do not hesitate to directly contact the AE in charge of your manuscript if a more detailed assessment of its status is required. Recently, the IEEE Computer Society has undergone major restructuring in operation to ensure that the continued satisfaction of all parties will be preserved in the future as we shift to an even more electronic dimension for all facets of publication activities. During 2009, the Editorial Board of TC has been enlarged in both scope and expertise. Many of our outstanding AEs have completed their terms and, on behalf of the IEEE CS, I would like to thank the following individuals for an outstanding job: Valmir Barbosa, Guiseppe Lipari, Alessandro Mei, C. Siva Ram Murthy, Bharadwaj Veeravalli, Cho-Li Wang, Zhiwei Xu, and Xiaodong Zhang The following colleagues are the new members of the Editorial Board of TC and their biographies can be found in the next pages: D.R. Avresky , Jianer Chen , Rajiv Gupta, Lizy Kurian John, Ethan Miller, Behrooz Parhami, Micheal Raynal, Jon Weissman, Cheng-Wen Wu, and Jie Wu I look forward to working with them to further enhance the standing of TC among our technical community and better serve you in the months ahead. I have the uttermost confi dence that 2010 will be yet another stellar year for TC and as always, do not hesitate to contact me at lombardi@ece.neu.edu for help and clarifi cation related to your manuscript.

Notes from the Editors: Restructuring the Journal of Operations Management

How I Review a Paper to Help Improve Citability and Impact

Polymer Reaction Engineering in China

Introduction and Vision I am honored to be taking over as Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions of Software Engineering (TSE). Jeff Kramer will be a hard act to follow, but I am immensely grateful to him for handing over the journal in such a healthy state, and for helping me learn the new job to ensure a smooth transition. It goes without saying that my primary goal as Editor is to maintain the journal’s reputation and standing as the leading forum for publishing the highest quality of research in software engineering. However, these are exciting and changing times in the world of publishing and in the discipline of software engineering, and I believe that TSE must lead the way by finding innovative ways to disseminate software engineering research and by contributing to setting and reflecting the research agenda in the field. To this end I have three medium term goals for my tenure as Editor: 1. To reemphasize the broad scope of the journal, encouraging the publication of multidisciplinary research as well as specialization in software engineering. 2. To engage with the software engineering community at large, including other journals, about the software engineering discipline, using not only the journal itself as a forum but through other professional outlets such as conferences and the web. 3. To support a debate on the nature of scholarly discourse in software engineering, such as the kind and length of papers published in the journal, or the different forms of peer review and discussion around what is published. Tactics The length of papers published in TSE has on occasion been a topic for some discussion. I do not propose to change the policy in this area but to clarify it, as I think it hides a number of issues within it. TSE publishes papers of any length, as long as their length is appropriate for the content presented. The discussion has often centered around what to do if accepted papers are over the IEEE Computer Society’s recommended length of 15 pages. However, there is an equally interesting discussion to be had for short papers. My view is this: There is nothing sacred about the length of a software engineering research contribution. Substantial pieces of work may need lengthy and detailed accounts of techniques, or of empirical studies or other kinds of evidence; but equally valuable results may be published in short papers. Indeed, other disciplines manage to publish seminal results in four pages. I will continue to be guided by my associate editors as to what constitutes an appropriate length for any particular contribution. I believe that we, as a community, have largely won the battle of persuading our deans and managers that publishing in conferences is a respectable form of publication. However, in a world of economic difficulties, carbon footprint consciousness, and fast internet-time publication, there is a strong case to be made that we need to redress the balance and publish more of our research in journals. Indeed, I would go as far as saying that many research students now go through their entire doctoral studies publishing in workshops and conferences only, and think that all research contributions can fit into the 2-column, 10-page format of IEEE conference publications. As a result, other than their PhD dissertations, these students do not get an opportunity to publish their work in an archival journal format. Of course, the frequency of conference reviewing has also had an impact on the nature of reviews that referees are asked to write. With little scope for improving conference papers before publication and heavy referee review loads, reviews tend to be short critiques of papers, rather than substantive engagements with the content that authors are trying to present. I therefore believe that journal reviews and revision allow for better quality work to be produced incrementally and then published. Of course, the journal publication process is not without cost to authors, referees, and editors, and we need to acknowledge this and tackle it head on. I was very taken by the discussion by Crowcroft et al. [1] on the varying incentives of the different stakeholders in the publication process: authors, referees, and editors. For TSE, the kind of behavior I would like to incentivize is for authors to submit innovative, rigorous, and well-presented accounts of their research and not overload the system with half-baked ideas or very small increments on previous work. I would like to incentivize referees to agree to review papers and to produce rigorous, thoughtful reviews. And, I would like to incentivize editors to seek and encourage submission of a wider range of contributions that will serve our research and practitioner community better. I have no magic to generate these incentives. However, in a year’s time TSE will make a number of awards to authors, referees, and (associate) editors to acknowledge the quality of research, feedback, and editing. I welcome feedback from the community on the specification of such awards.

I is a tremendous honor for me to be selected as the next Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of such a prestigious and well-regarded journal as the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC). I am grateful to the Steering Committee for giving me this opportunity to shape the premiere publication forum in my fi eld. This appointment is even more pleasant as becoming the EIC is a sort of coming home event since my fi rst editorial board experience was as an Associate Editor for this journal when it was formed. TMC has been tremendously fortunate to have Tom La Porta and Nitin H. Vaidya as its fi rst two EICs. Together with the Steering Committee and IEEE Computer Society’s publications staff, Tom and Nitin nurtured this young journal through its formative years as it grew from a quarterly journal to a monthly one with one of the highest impact factors. Measures instituted by them, such as increased publication frequency, more pages, and the availability of preprints and rapid posts, have kept the turnaround time low and thus maintained TMC’s relevance in a fast moving fi eld with competition from selective conferences viewed by some as “journal equivalent.” Clearly, following in their footsteps is a challenge. Where should TMC go next? As I have pondered this question in recent weeks, my thoughts keep coming back to one aspect of TMC: the composition of the community—readers and authors—that it currently attracts and serves. Mobile computing is an inherently multidisciplinary area involving intellectual activities not just from networking but also from computing, embedded systems, low-power circuits, wireless signal processing, and applications. Indeed, some of the greatest advances in this fi eld have been driven by innovations from these other areas. It was precisely this multidisciplinary aspect of mobile computing that attracted me to the fi eld some 15 years ago as a fresh graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, trained in embedded systems and VLSI signal processing but surrounded by networking researchers at Bell Labs. Despite the diversity of topics that are in its scope, TMC remains very much a networking-centered journal in the types of papers it currently attracts. My goal is to take the journal in a direction where it refl ects the multidisciplinary nature of mobile computing and becomes the premier journal that covers all aspects of mobile computing. Building on TMC’s mobile and wireless networking core, I hope to also attract a critical mass of contributors and readers from computing, embedded systems, low-power circuits, and wireless signal processing. In the coming months, I shall certainly take concrete steps in reaching this goal, such as expanding the editorial board to include experts in applications, systems, circuits, and signal-processing aspects. My hope is to attract authors from these fi elds and to be able to provide meaningful and fair reviews for their papers. However, to really make TMC refl ect the diversity of mobile computing, we need help from you, our readers and authors. Many of you have broader research activities in mobile computing, and I invite you to submit excellent papers on systems and other aspects. Please help spread this word as well, and in return we promise your papers the timely and high-quality reviews and short decision cycle that TMC is well known for. Last, the success of any journal is built primarily on four groups of people: the contributors, the reviewers, the associate editors, and the publications staff. I would like to thank all of them and express my sincere appreciation for the support they have given to TMC under my predecessors. I look forward to continuing this relationship and receiving your suggestions and ideas for making TMC more valuable for our research community.

This special issue of Empirical Software Engineering consists of revised and extended versions of five selected papers originally presented at the 1st International Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering (SSBSE 2009). The symposium was held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, UK, in May 2009, and brought together the academic researchers and industrial practitioners that make up the international Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE) community for the first conference dedicated to the subject. Search Based Software Engineering is the application of search-based optimization techniques—for example, genetic algorithms, hill climbing, simulated annealing, taboo search, and ant colony optimization—to the solution of software engineering problems. Many such problems are often difficult or impossible to solve manually, and moreover, as modern software becomes more complex and adopts distributed and highly parallel architectures, are proving to be increasingly intractable using traditional automated techniques. In contrast, SBSE approaches can leverage sophisticated optimisation algorithms running on affordable computing infrastructure to solve these problems. SBSE approaches also demonstrate other advantages: they can be used to find acceptably good solutions when time, or resources, are limited, and—by utilizing multi-objective search algorithms—can derive a range of solutions that illustrate potential trade-offs between competing goals. For these reasons, both academic and industrial interest in SBSE is increasing rapidly. A recent survey,1 undertaken by the UK-based SEBASE project, indicated an exponential growth of

Greetings to our stakeholders: readers, authors, reviewers, associate editors, guest editors, past editors, staff, and all others who have contributed to the success of the Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD). It is a privilege to be selected as the new Editor of this prestigious journal. I am both honored and challenged with assuming the responsibilities of this position.I am honored because my predecessor, Professor Panos Papalambros of the University of Michigan, together with the board of Associate Editors and staff members, has done a superb job over the last five years serving the journal and our design engineering community. As Editor-in-Chief of JMD, Professor Papalambros put in place an impressive array of best practices such as streamlining and promoting timely publication of contributions in emerging design areas, producing insightful and enjoyable monthly editorials, guest editorials, and yearly special issues, and creating a new companion website (http://asmejmd.org/) for the journal. These and other related efforts have resulted in the publication of many high quality papers and helped place JMD among a few top journals worldwide in the area of design engineering in general and mechanical design in particular.I am also challenged because I want to place this premier journal at an even higher level of excellence. What strategies should I use to meet this challenge? Here are a few initial ideas: I will seek input from the journal's leading stakeholders for ways to further improve the quality and impact of JMD. I will continue with the current best practices devised by my predecessor while identifying and implementing new ones. I will invite top researchers to submit articles in popular and emerging areas and put those papers on a fast track for publication. I will strive to reduce further the review time from submission to publication. Following the ASME's global motto, I will carefully promote JMD worldwide and, in particular, seek quality papers from diverse regions where the JMD authorship is currently low or non-existent. I will identify globally applicable design related areas for the journal to consider and solicit papers and editorials to promote them, including those that meet the National Academy of Engineering grand challenges, the ASME strategic priorities, and others, such as innovation and competitiveness, design for affordable and reliable sources of energy, design for global impact, design for sustainability, and design for environmental and human health. In addition, I will continue to build upon the ASME legacy: embed excellence at all levels of JMD.To be successful, I will rely on the assistance and wisdom of our dedicated reviewers, our board of very talented associate editors, guest editors, and staff members supporting the journal. I am also pleased to introduce a new member to our staff family, Assistant to Editor: Ms. Amy Suski, who has a Law degree from the University of Virginia. Ms. Suski has experience as an Editorial Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Journal and will bring a fresh perspective to the operation of the JMD.Every one of our stakeholders makes up the fabric of the Journal of Mechanical Design. If we seek to take this journal to the next higher level of excellence, then all of us must work together to do it. I hope you will join me on this promising journey, and I look forward to receiving your suggestions and best submissions for consideration in the JMD.Happy New Year!

The advancement of technology has brought up so many elements of ease for human beings that now humans cannot afford to think of a life without all these. But all is not about ease and comfort. Along with all these elements, there are many modern complexities as well as challenges too. Big data analytics and cloud computing are among the elements in which we face many challenges. This document discusses some of the challenges in big data analytics and cloud computing.

Cloud computing could be a hot research area among the researchers in today’s world. Cloud computing is thought on be a promising resolution for mobile computing as a result of many reasons for quality, portability, and communication. The need for mobility in cloud computing has given the worth to mobile cloud computing. The cloud computing during this paper has been explored the variety of mechanism for providing data security in order that cloud computing would be widely accepted by the variety of many users. Also, this paper presents an overview of cloud computing research issues, challenges, and future directions.

<span lang="EN-US">Cloud computing is a new technology which refers to an infrastructure where both software and hardware application are operate for the network with the help of internet. Cloud computing provide these services with the help of rule know as you pay as you go on. Internet of things (IoT) is a new technology which is growing rapidly in the field of telecommunications. The aim of IoT devices is to connect all things around us to the Internet and thus provide us with smarter cities, intelligent homes and generally more comfortable lives. The combation of cloud computing and IoT devices make rapid development of both technologies. In this paper, we present information about IoT and cloud computing with a focus on the security issues of both technologies. Concluding we present the contribution of cloud computing to the IoT technology. Thus, it shows how the cloud computing technology improves the function of the IoT. Finally present the security challenges of both technologies IoT and cloud computing.</span>

Machine learning (ML)-centric resource management in cloud computing: A review and future directions